1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to image classifying methods and systems.
2. Description of Related Art
People routinely separate photographs into classes before sharing them with others. Before sharing, people typically classify photographs into those they wish to put in the family album to share with others versus those they intend to leave in an unsorted storage box.
Digital photographing opens up new worlds of opportunity for sharing and reminiscing about people's experience with others. With digital images, such as digital photographs, this kind of classification is conducted even more. This occurs because there are more ways to share, such as, for example, digital albums, cards, calendars, slide-shows, CD-ROMs, DVDs, Web pages, and email; more photographs, because, for example, people take more photographs with digital cameras than their analog counterparts; and more classifications, such as, for example, original images, touched-up images and the like.
Slide-show and light table user interfaces have been used for classifying digital photographs. For example, slide-show user interfaces are well suited for examining photographs in a close-up way to make judgments regarding the photographs' qualities. However, because such user interfaces display a single photograph at a time, slide-show interfaces are not well suited for making decisions with reference to other related photographs, such as similar photographs, or touched-up versions of the same photograph. Also, the slide-show user interfaces require complex procedures to classify photos, or sort them into separate folders.
Light table user interfaces have been used for comparing digital photographs because light table user interfaces display more than one photograph at a time. However, the more photographs that are displayed at one time on such light table user interfaces, the less resolution that is available for each photograph, making close-up examination and comparison challenging. Light table user interfaces have also been used for reviewing classification choices. Although light table user interfaces can provide an overview of photograph classification, light table user interfaces do not display a user's choices within the context of the original sequence of photographs, making it difficult for a user to see at a glance whether the user excluded photographs the user should have included, and vice versa.